Well, thanks everybody for being here. I think we're at the last session of the day for day two of the Citi Technology Conference. I'm Steve Enders, part of the software research team here. With us today for, I guess, the last session of the day is Madhu from OpenText. Madhu, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Steve, for having OpenText.
Yeah. So maybe just to start off, I think, OpenText has gone through a pretty lot of changes in the past few years. You know, cloudification, acquiring Micro Focus, divesting parts of Micro Focus, and a recent restructuring. So maybe can you kind of walk us through that journey, and maybe how is OpenText as a business different today than it was a few years ago?
Yeah, absolutely. As you rightly pointed out, we've gone through, you know, many changes. We've gone through dramatic changes. I'll start here. We are a relatively young software company at thirty three years old. And our growth historically has been driven by value-driven acquisitions and by organic growth. I do want to put an emphasis on cloud, especially to your question about what is different today than the journey of OpenText. Several acquisitions have contributed to the foundation of OpenText in content, in Business Network, in cybersecurity. The most transformative acquisition is, you know, what we closed in January 2023, that's Micro Focus. And now thinking of Micro Focus as the mainframe business, AMC, which we divested, is really where we are as an information management company.
You know, what I would say is, when we think about data in enterprises, data that's stored, data that's moved, data that's secured, all of that is managed by OpenText, and that's the right way to think about it. So we are focused on our top priorities, where we sit today, which is really deepening and expanding our competitive advantage, growth in the cloud, cloud acceleration. We have done very well. We had a very good fiscal 2024 in terms of our full year of integration of Micro Focus, so we are well on our path of margin expansion. And lastly, and we can talk more about it, is we are back into very strong capital allocation, driven by dividends and share buybacks. So where we are today, that's different, given all the rapid journeys, I would put a stronger emphasis on cloud.
Expect to hear more from us from a cloud perspective, and also, as I said, we have always been unique in terms of operational efficiency and profits, and we're gonna continue to be on the path.
Okay. Now, that's a great place to start. I think maybe think about OpenText. The roots are in kind of ECM, content management. You've talked a lot more about information management. Can you maybe just talk about that transition and kind of everything that you would kind of include in that information management umbrella?
Yeah. So in our most recent earnings presentation, it's specifically slide 7 of our investor deck, you'll see how we've broken down our revenues, which is really our product groups and our markets. So it's content, is about 40%, and cybersecurity is 20%, Business Network is 10%, IT Operations Management is 10%, Application Automation is 15%, and analytics is 5%. Now, think about these in the context of what I said earlier on the cloud, which is, it's led by content, Business Network, and ITOM, but really think about all of them are business cloud. Some are more advanced from a cloud perspective than the others, but those are really the opportunities for us. Again, we can talk more about fiscal 2027 when we speak about 7%-9% growth.
Content has seen a lot of R&D investments for cloud and is on its path to be very strong in the cloud. Cybersecurity has a lot of cloud in it. ITOM is early in the cloud. Application automation is early in the cloud, right?, and Business Network has always been in the cloud, so depending on where the different product groups are, but that's how we're defining information management, right? It's content, it's Business Network, cybersecurity, ITOM, IT Operations Management, Application Automation, and of course, all wrapped around from analytics, and I'm sure you have a question on AI, we can talk about it, but AI is a real calling for us to, to continue the growth in the cloud and to, and to many different directions.
Okay. Yeah, definitely want to touch on AI in a bit. I think, maybe before we get there, you know, a lot of areas in the portfolio, can you maybe help us think through kind of what you would consider the growth of your areas, where you see kind of the opportunity, and which maybe are a little bit kind of more mature, and you're kind of managing through some of those?
Yeah. So with cloud being our leading growth driver, think about content as very well poised and continuing to report, and we're thinking about disclosures down the road. Very strong growth rates in the cloud, right? Now Business Network, again, it's very sector-focused. We serve industrial, we serve automotive, we serve the pharma, and given the strength of the sector, you will see the strength in Business Network as well. We are driving security and AI across our business clouds, and that's gonna remain a growth driver. I mean, most important is, you know, what I would say, new use cases are emerging, and those use cases are going to require any form of cloud that we offer. We offer private cloud, we offer public cloud, and we offer SaaS.
We actually finished our fiscal 2024 with a strong organic growth rate in the cloud, but more importantly, in Q4, we saw slightly over 3%. All of these growth drivers are gonna contribute to the 2%-5% in 2025 and the 7%-9%. Our leading indicator remains the cloud bookings growth, right? When you look at our 25% growth rate, we're looking at over $900 million of enterprise cloud bookings in fiscal 2025, and that's at the heels of about $700 million the previous year, $530 million in the previous year. Again, all of this is. Today, cloud is about 35% of our revenues, and when you look at our fiscal 2027, it's gonna be well north of that, right? So those are kind of the key areas from a growth driver perspective.
Okay, that makes sense. I do wanna ask about some of the optimization initiatives.
I think you had about 2% RIF in July. I guess, what led to that change? How do you think about, you know, the focus areas of reinvestment from here, and I guess kind of any implications this has on the margin trajectory?
Yeah, absolutely. Look, many companies have different reasons for their restructuring and optimization. Ours is a very relentless focus on how efficient can we be at this scale. So the 36%-38% in 2027, upon a $5.7-$5.9 billion revenue range, that is our measure of efficiency at that size and scale. Now, coming about eighteen months off of the Micro Focus acquisition, we saw opportunities to be on that efficiency path. The restructuring was focused, you know, primarily on the U.S. workforce, and moving our talent to what we call the Centers of Excellence. Our Centers of Excellence are centers where there's market for the talent, we can hire at the rate that we want to, and of course, there could be a cost differential, right?
Our Centers of Excellence are India, Romania, and Canada, and that's really the shift we made. Now, we maintain the U.S. workforce on areas like professional services, you know, sales. The reinvestment we made, think of them as bag carriers
... as quota carriers. It's the best reinvestment you can make, right? And you have to make it much in advance. So these are sales reps, these are renewal reps, and these are professional services reps. Now, from a margin expansion perspective, we focused on the reinvestment starting from the beginning of the fiscal year, so think of it as carrying costs for the entire year. So that, that's also why we expanded the margin a 100 basis points and not more than that. But the benefit of that is gonna come through to our fiscal 2027 path of the 36%-38%.
Okay. All right, that's great context there. There've been some leadership changes. Brought in some new go-to-market leaders, and I think you yourself took on a bit of a promotion here, so congratulations.
Thank you.
I guess what has changed from an execution standpoint, and are there shifts underway with the new leadership coming in? How do you kinda think about, you know, some of the, I guess, near-term execution?
Yeah. So again, different companies have different org structures, but I'd like to speak to the three-president structure as one that was needed for the size and scale of OpenText. Now, let's talk about sales. Prior to this, Todd Cione as the president of Worldwide Sales, we had about five theaters reporting into a CEO directly, right? So this was the right time, at the heels of Micro Focus coming out of an eighteen-month great integration, you know, framework to appoint Todd as the worldwide head of sales. Paul Duggan, he runs all of Renewals, and he also runs the Cloud Services business. So think of him as cloud... Once the cloud booking is done, he's responsible for the delivery of the, of the revenue, and of course, a very marquee installed base.
Now, these two growth revenue organizations, the leadership there is really intended to bring unification to the renewal side, unification to cloud deployment, and unification to the selling organization, right? And we have various product groups, as we just talked about earlier, and this is really gonna be very instrumental. And the unification is important, is how you think about value proposition for a large customer, right? And having that across the pillars is very important. And both of them bring tremendous years of enterprise, I mean, enterprise selling experience, and we couldn't be more excited. And as for myself, the add has been twofold. One is just leading operations throughout the company more officially, so to speak.
And I always was seeing that as part of the role, now just taking an operational lens throughout the company, and that's gonna be very integral to our march towards the upper quartile EBITDA margin, and of course, taking on corporate development as well. So that includes the AMC divestiture, includes a TSA with AMC, and we're excited to be more into the tuck-in M&A process, you know, from a corp dev perspective.
Okay. I guess maybe this is a good time to maybe talk a little bit about the cloud opportunity
Sure
... and kind of the AI side, and how you're thinking about, you know, that opportunity there. Maybe we can just start on kind of the cloud side. I think cloud bookings has seen some pretty impressive quarters here, the past couple. But I don't think we've necessarily seen that translate yet to the revenue side. Can you maybe help us kind of bridge the gap between the, I think, you know, 33% bookings growth you saw in 2024, versus the kind of 2%-5% 2025 cloud revenue growth guide?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a question we get asked often, and it's one that's very important. What the bookings does is give us forward visibility. We shared a quarter ago in an earnings call that our cloud contracts are getting into a median or an average of four-year tenure versus three-year tenure, and that means a lot, right? So our ramp time for the OpenText Enterprise Cloud, particularly the private cloud side, just the ramp time could be as long as 6 - 9 months, and then, of course, there are leading applications that enterprises think about when they purchase an OpenText solution. It's not just purchased on its own, it's purchased on the heels of a CRM, it's purchased on the heels of an ERP, so I say that those horses leave the barn before we do, right?
So the ramp time could be as long as 6-9 months, and then, of course, we start the deployment, and the curve goes a bit sort of slower, and then very fast into the third year or the fourth year. So think of these bookings as giving us visibility and strength into the 2%-5% of fiscal 2025... and to the 7%-9% of fiscal 2027, right? So we look forward to, like, sometime in fiscal 2025, to coming with better correlation algorithms, so to speak, on how do you take the bookings to revenue. That has been an important aspect that we obviously track very detailed internally, but we'd like to give the investors a consumable model to that, but we couldn't be more excited about the visibility and the strength of bookings given.
The last thing I'll say is our cloud bookings is they're all non-cancelable. So over the term of the three years or the four years, or in some cases even longer, right, we end up receiving the full benefit of those, meaning of those bookings. It's just a matter of time.
Okay, that makes sense. I mean, it does feel like you are seeing pretty good just general strength on the cloud side. You know, based on the execution in 2024, but also I think for 2025, you raised the guide on cloud bookings now to 25%. So I guess, what are you seeing from a new demand perspective or migration activity that's giving you confidence in this elevated level?
Yeah, and you asked the question in your earlier comments, so let me just expand on it, and we've said this in the last few quarters. The AI wave is really helping OpenText to expand its cloud bookings.
Mm-hmm.
The volume of unstructured data that sits in enterprises still remains very, very high.
Mm-hmm.
Customers are very keen to what we call organize for AI or prepare for AI. That is really the strength that you're seeing in our cloud bookings. We're having hundreds of conversations on AI. AI is part of every cloud conversation. As I spoke about it earlier, there are new use cases. They're thinking about new workloads, but for our business model, it's really kind of bifurcated into two phases. One, preparing for AI, the strength of the cloud bookings, and the actual AI revenues itself, which we're not calling out yet, right? We are product ready on the Aviator, which is our AI products, and Aviator product is really launched on every one of our product groups, in content, in cybersecurity, in ITOM, et cetera.
So I would say the big demand drivers remain the customers wanting to be ready with respect to AI. And the second piece I will outline that's probably unique to OpenText is our customers are talking about very large, complex problems, right? They're not talking about kind of the smaller use cases. So that again is an important tailwind for us. And I would say a minor point, please think of the cloud growth rate as an annual growth rate, right? We do have certain quarters where we do really well. So the 33% at the heels of that, I would put our 25% vis-à-vis a 15% starting point we had about two quarters ago, that we were able to take it up to 25%.
So, I think in summary, I would say preparing for AI, really large, complex problems that the customers are trying to solve, and organizing for AI that's creating these demand drivers.
Okay. Maybe we can talk a little bit, you know, now that we're on the topic of AI, how should we... You've already talked around, like, people are getting ready for AI, and that's beginning to impact things. But I guess, how should we be thinking about the kind of next level of AI monetization, where people are leveraging, you know, OpenText AI and Aviator and all those kind of other products that you've been coming out with?
Yeah. So, we began to be product ready last October, and the Aviator products themselves have come through a few evolution points. As I said, we're having hundreds of conversations. They're also translating into customers kicking off pilots, and we noted Bosch as an important customer. We noted a large retailer that's thinking about $50 billion of contract value in terms of AI. So the key thing here has been introduce what we call our Aviator Thrust offerings and grow our Aviator Thrust offerings. We have the sales team ready. We have the professional services team ready. So look to us to speak more about these pilots or the use cases from an AI Aviator perspective, that will eventually turn into, I mean, like, turn into monetization.
But more importantly, I think as you outlined earlier, we see the tailwind of this as, you know, helping us in our cloud bookings.
Mm-hmm.
And that's really why we can see the 25% growth, you know, which again, if you do the math, it's well over $900 billion of cloud bookings in the year. And we're actually quite excited about it.
Yeah. No, that's pretty impressive growth. I think you've talked about some of these early wins, but maybe we can talk a little bit more around the actual use cases that-
Yeah
... that people are coming to OpenText to help solve for leveraging those AI. Like, what are those, what do those look like, or, how do you feel like you're actually helping the customers leveraging your AI solutions?
Yeah. So, a few comments there. The right to AI, we really think about it as the readiness for AI, as I talked about.
And we are just more than ready. For our customers, there's no vendor better than OpenText to deploy AI, just given they have trusted us with their content and data in, you know, many cases, multiple years and multiple decades. Customers are looking at optimizing, like, literally their billion-dollar supply chain, right? And when you look at this volume of contracts where AI can be applied, you're talking about $50 billion worth of contracts, where again, the customers are thinking about pilots at the moment, but it's gonna be what we call the steady, and somewhere an inflection point, right?
And in the Business Network, for example, automotive, et cetera, they are looking at every single trade that can be optimized through the, you know, application of AI and Aviator. So whether it's a content customer or a BN customer, that's really where we personally are excited, and the importance of how OpenText rolled out Aviator by the product group, we made it easier for the customer to not think too much about where the product would fit, but to think more about what problems and use cases they're trying to solve.
Okay.
Stay tuned, and you know, more to come on that.
I'm sure we'll hear more at your conference in next month, or coming?
It's in November.
Okay.
I mean, I was gonna say the product teams or the sales teams are absolutely gonna showcase all the product innovation, and AI is gonna be a key theme. It's on November eighteenth and nineteenth, and you'll hear more from our IR teams.
Okay, perfect. No, I'm, I'm sure we're all, we're all excited and, ready to see what comes out of that.
Sure thing.
Maybe, shifting gears slightly, you know, understand the AI solutions. Sounds like it's having good performance on it, but maybe what does the macro backdrop look like today? Are customers at a point where, you know, the budgets are unlocking, they're beginning to put dollars to work for AI? Or what is kind of the general OpenText customer's budget look like today?
Yeah. I think one unique aspect about us is we don't speak about macro too often.
Mm-hmm.
And here are the few reasons for that. The macro is uneven for all customers. But for us, what we found is that a very positive macro background or a very challenging macro background, our customers are always sort of in the business of revenue augmentation or cost optimization. So our solutions become mission-critical from an, you know, enterprise perspective. And what I would also say is that the demand drivers we've talked about have remained very consistent for our, you know, for our customers. And whether it's private cloud, public cloud or SaaS, where they really look for is the value proposition in their environment, and that's really where our solutions are focused on. Our sales dialogues are kind of geared towards that.
I would say from a financial model perspective, we have assumed no improvement in interest rate environment, and no improvement in the FX environment, which again, if there are green shoots on either side, we are certainly going to be able to do better, and the last point, the most important point, the breadth of our business model, the various product groups, we always find gives it an inherent resilience to macro, right? The Business Network could have macro impact from automotive or energy, oil and gas, but then content could be doing really well, right? so our growth rates are really, you know, predicated on sort of a, I mean, a combined influence of the macro.
We come out more resilient to the macro environment, just given the nature of our solution, as well as I would say, somewhat of a built-in resilience within the product groups, as there sort of the reaction to the macro.
Okay. I guess maybe digging in a little bit more for the different segments, maybe where are you seeing a little bit of strength right now? Maybe things are a little bit softer. Any way to kind of help frame what that's looking like?
Yeah. So from a product group perspective, content to cloud again, or content is running very strong- And we see that runway, you know, quite far. And cybersecurity is a very important pillar for us, and both on the enterprise side. We called an SMB headwind. We're not quite calling it anymore, but as it turns into a tailwind, I think that certainly could be similar, like, you know, very supportive for us. But think about ITOM and our solutions here. Certainly, ServiceNow is the big gorilla out there, but we are in very exciting early stages of our service management solutions. So I think, Steve, many of our products are, especially ones from Micro Focus, where we are relentlessly focused on getting those declines to flat to growth, right?
Mm.
So the product innovation, the go-to-market efforts inherent in all of that, is going to be our own growth driver, so to speak.
Okay. Makes sense. On the Q4 performance, I think things maybe were a little bit choppier this quarter. You know, can you maybe kind of walk through what happened? I guess what's you know, what that looks like going forward, and I guess kind of like what's fixable from that perspective, and how do you feel like the business is positioned to move forward here?
Yeah, absolutely. I'll take it from the last point of your question. The business is positioned very strong. Look, Q4 marks the last quarter of our fiscal 2024, and we truly had an outstanding 2024. Specific to Q4, the miss was on license, and the miss was on Micro Focus license. And what we found in the quarter was it was the same sales reps, account execs of Micro Focus, who were speaking with the AMC customers about the divestiture that happened and how their standing within OpenText still remained very strong. So if you really think about it, sales teams are all about selling time.
Mm-hmm.
We lost a bit of selling time. We haven't lost the deals, you know, we haven't lost the business, and the customers are well-grounded, but that did contribute to a miss in license and Micro Focus license in Q4. Now, Q4 turned the corner very nicely on our cloud organic growth. We were slightly over 3% in Q4. You know, it was kind of the highest in the year, and we are assuming the trajectory into fiscal 2025 at 2%-5%. Again, we should measure the business on annual bookings growth rate, so the 33% is very strong, and I would point to the 25% in 2025.
So Steve, 2025 is going to be marked by another second year built upon the strong, scaled company with the, you know, Micro Focus. The debt burden eased a bit with the delever of $2 billion, right? And we can talk more about cash flows. But it's going to start the trajectory of growing cash flows. We are expanding EBITDA margins. So we look at fiscal 2025 as just a very strong foundation going into 2026 and 2027.
Okay, I do want to ask about the kind of ramp here in the new medium-term guide that you laid out. I think before we get there, you know, I guess you talked a bit about the selling time lost in Q4. I guess as we think about the changes that got put in place here so far in 1Q, and the RIF and some of the changes in go-to-market leadership, I guess, do you feel like there's any kind of, you know, any incremental risk that kind of comes from those changes? Or how should we think about what that means for the business in 1 Q?
No, thank you for the question. And look, no incremental risks, and we believe only incremental benefits. Todd Cione has already hired quite a group of very strong sales leaders into various parts of the, you know, of the business. And we are very pleased with the hiring, and as all of them ramp up, it's to bring the organic growth selling DNA more and more into the business. Right. We have to become more efficient, given the scale, and the restructuring we did was just a first step towards that. We are investing a lot into our Centers of Excellence to actually get them even more productive and value-adding at a global scale, and whether that's Canada or India or Romania, and that's part of our plan.
So I would say transformative Micro Focus, divest of AMC, bringing OpenText along. We've kind of really stabilized and strengthened the company to what we need to deliver in 2025 and beyond.
Okay. All right, that makes sense.
And maybe if you don't mind, I'll just add-
Sure
... we you know talked about Paul Duggan, and particularly on the renewal side. You know, Paul is launching, as he shared in the earnings call, I mean, a Digital Renewal Center, right? And you know renewal is $2.4 billion-plus of business. And that's a very important step in turning the renewals from a renewal to expansion, and we can talk more about that if you'd like. But again the changes we made. Look, changes are hard, but we're very thoughtful about the changes we made, and these are absolutely gonna strengthen us to grow, strengthen us to expand margins, and expanding margins is really gonna put a better lens towards capital allocation as well.
Okay. No, that's great. Yeah, maybe we do ask about the expansion, renew, and renewal potential of the business. I think that historically there's been focus on, you know, Micro Focus and trying to get that to kind of corporate average there.
Yeah.
So how should we be thinking about what the implications are with the sales changes on, you know, retention rates and renewals?
... moving forward? And how are you all thinking about, you know, the changes actually being put in place to drive that motion?
Absolutely. Think of us a few steps behind what the industry's always spoken about, you know, like, net renewal rates and expansion rates.
Mm-hmm
... right? So we are looking forward to bridging that gap. Look, the Micro Focus renewal journey was a great milestone in 2024, but not quite done yet. We do want to get Micro Focus into the low nineties, right? So the net renewal rate has been in the works for a while, and it's obviously led by, Paul Duggan. We finished our renewal rates at 95% off cloud, 92% cloud. If we had applied the expansion rate, they would actually be in the mid-nineties, right, from a cloud perspective as well. Now, all companies generally capture consumption and expansion. We captured consumption, we haven't captured expansion, and which is what we look forward to bringing together to share. And that's where the real growth is.
The renewal reps in our business are not just responsible for renewing at the principal value. They're responsible for adding workloads, right, adding premium rates. And we actually call it the customer success organization, and Paul has actually implemented new customer success tiers, which you will see in the expansion. And we believe 2025 is the right time to do that. We're slightly behind, but we're looking forward to catching up.
Okay. No, that's, that makes complete sense. Maybe we can switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit about the margin profile-
Yep
... here. You know, I know there's been a lot of changes in the business, so maybe we can just talk, just start on the short term, you know, cash flow nuances or the interest expenses-
Yeah
... and kind of what the path to improving EBITDA and EBITDA conversion looks like from here.
Yeah, absolutely. So for fiscal 2025, we're looking at 33%-34%, right? EBITDA margin, adjusted EBITDA margin. Now, when you actually look at fiscal 2024, it was $2 billion of adjusted EBITDA dollars. That's 34%, right? Now, the margin expansion from 33%-34%, 36% and 26%, and 36%-38%, is gonna be contributed in a few different angles. From a OpEx perspective, we right-sized in early July through the plan you just mentioned. I talked about cloud gross margin. It's a very important lever to the EBITDA margin. Our trough on cloud gross margin is 59%. We picked up in Q4.
We are modeling low sixties in fiscal 2025, and with some of the efficiencies and growth in revenue and scale, and a better product mix of SaaS, which is also part of the engineering innovation, we do expect cloud gross margin to contribute. From an OpEx standpoint, we talked on the call about being more efficient in sales, having our AI Aviator help out in our sales process, and have engineering have specific projects on automating QA, all of that. So increasing those efficiencies is actually gonna get us to the 36%-38%, you know, gross margin, of course, helped by the top line as well. Now, that's gonna translate to $1.2-$1.3 billion in free cash flows, right?
Our distribution of free cash flows, our capital allocation is 50% dividend and buybacks, and at the moment, we believe our stock is the best buy, so we are actively in the share repurchase program we announced, and getting to $1.2-1.3 billion, expect the capital allocation on the remainder of the 50% will continue to decide between, as you rightly said, the dividend, debt reduction, share repurchases, and selective M&A.
Okay. I do want to come back to that topic, but before talking about that, you know, you have those fiscal 2027 targets out there.... and I think one of the questions we've still been getting, especially on the cash flow side, is kind of help us bridge the gap between where things sit on the free cash flow today versus that 2027 target. So, you know, can you just kind of walk through the one-time things that are kind of-
Yeah
... in there and kind of bridge the gap between-
Yeah
... between those two numbers?
The $575-$625 we have for fiscal 2025.
Mm-hmm.
It's a bit burdened by the tax gain on the AMC transaction, and that's about $250 million. And again, we have to think about it as coming off of the proceeds, but it's gonna hit the free cash flow this year. So if you were to take the midpoint, and you sort of get up to more the $850 million range, that's really the path from the $850 million over to the $1.2-$1.3 billion, right? And as EBITDA improves, our cash flow conversion from the EBITDA is also gonna rise from somewhere in the 40s today into the upper 50s, and that's what's gonna contribute to the free cash flow. Two important aspects here, including Micro Focus.
Our working capital remains strong, right? Going from profitability to our operating cash flows, our working capital remains strong. We brought Micro Focus on to our working capital parity, as you see from the DSOs and other metrics that we share. And notwithstanding the cloud growth, our CapEx also remains efficient, right? We've remained at around 2%, 2%-3% of revenues on CapEx, and we're gonna stay at that. And maybe a word on that is making our cloud operation more efficient is gonna mean, in the private cloud, our own data center footprint being more efficient and also leveraging the hyperscalers, right? So that's how we think about that, Steve.
Think more in the $800 million range in terms of free cash flow as a starting point, if you want to talk about 25-27, and then ramping up the EBITDA, and then ramping up the conversion rates, but founded on strong working capital and CapEx efficiency.
Okay, all right. All that makes sense. I do want to talk a little bit about the shift in the strategy a little bit in terms of how you're thinking about M&A. I think historically, think about OpenText
Yeah
... has been a pretty big acquirer, then there was some digestion that happened here. And now it seems like, instead of going full-on in the M&A bucket, it's more on kind of tuck-ins and some smaller things. So, can you talk a little bit about how you're thinking about, you know, what that actually means from an M&A perspective to be part of the capital allocation plan? And what are kind of the criteria that you would be looking for in a potential target now?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Look, we are in a bit of a unique position that is not a very highly desired position, which is, for all the things we've done and where we stand and, and what we have in terms of future, product and growth and market opportunities, we do remain tremendously undervalued. So we prioritize share repurchases as top of the house from a capital, from a capital allocation perspective. I think your term is right. I think it is about digestion, and for that and for us, the digestion means, you know, getting the Micro Focus products back to more organic growth, upping the renewal rates, and cloudification. We never did the Micro Focus transaction for their license business. We did it for the opportunities to cloudify, and that was a ten-year journey for OpenText. It's probably a shorter journey as we look ahead.
So that cloudification of Micro Focus products is also part of the digestion process-
Mm-hmm
... and the opportunity ahead, right? So all of those in front of us, we remain, we believe our stock is the, I mean, our stock is the best buy. Look, we have a lot of muscle memory on M&A.
Mm-hmm.
That's an understatement, right? So we will, we will be in the M&A market, but down the road, as we get into a better currency from a stock perspective, improve the cash flows, and, you know, when—like, once again, we remain cognizant of the debt, so we'll keep evaluating the four, which is, of course, dividend, repurchases, debt reduction, and M&A. But when all of that currency improves, and the right transaction comes in at the right value, and the right value to us, and the right value from a market perspective, we would not be hesitant to engage in it.
Okay, I know we've kind of already touched on capital allocation a little bit-
Sure, sure
... and, like, there is the view that the stock is cheap, so let's go buy it. But how are you thinking about... Well, you do have the plan already in place on that part, but how did that plan maybe come together, and how should we think about, you know, maybe what the right mix looks like moving forward between buybacks, dividends, M&A, and also continuing to kind of de-lever the business?
Yeah. So, as I said earlier, we haven't really modeled any improvement in interest rates-
Mm-hmm
... right? So the average portfolio is still about 6%, and there's still appetite to optimize that. So, no, look, we have been a consistent dividend payer and look for that to continue, right? But, you know, between the other three, we would definitely keep doing the math and the modeling around, can we de-lever even more? We're delighted we de-levered 30%. Can we de-lever even more? Is the 2.9-ish the right net leverage ratio, or, you know, could we be lower than that? Right, of course, and I think share repurchase, as long as the stock is around these levels, we'll continue to prioritize share repurchases. The type of M&A we look at was also your question.
Mm-hmm.
Our lens is definitely cloud-related M&A, right? And we can talk a lot about this, but we're not gonna compromise on our cash flow targets, profitability targets. But you know, growthier assets, if they come at a reasonable price and adds to the organic growth of OpenText, and where we can bring our excellence in operations to those growthier assets and keep our cash flow targets, we'll certainly entertain that. So I would say the measurement really is the value of the stock is the cost of the debt, right? And how fast or how much can an asset add to our growth and add to our cash flows?
Yep, that makes sense. You mentioned the leverage ratio, but I guess why is this kind of the right area, 3x, 2.9x? Why is that kind of the right area for OpenText to be at?
So at a lower scale company, being below three was sort of the right, well, it was sort of the right area zone for us. And at this point, I would say we are delighted with the 30%, the deleverage we did. But should the right opportunity present itself to delever even more, we will. And, you know, as you can appreciate, it's definitely a drain on the cash flows, right? And the more we can optimize the free cash flow, the opportunities open up, as we just talked about, in terms of... I mean, in terms of M&A as well. So that's sort of how we think about the use of the cash flows.
Okay. All right, makes sense. I think we're running up on time here. We've got about a minute left, but I do want to ask about OpenText World-
Yeah
... in November, so I appreciate the clarity on that one.
Yeah.
I guess, what should investors be paying attention to, at the upcoming conference?
Yeah. So, we welcome wide distribution of the conference information, and we are looking for very strong attendance. We did something similar last year, and Harry and the team did that. It was very well received. So here's what I'd leave you with, right? You hear a lot about the financial profile of OpenText and financial targets in our earnings call, and plenty of conversations ensue on that. So at OpenText World, we're looking forward to presenting to you from the sales organization, from the product organization, and there'll be plenty of real live product demos. So the three areas we'd like you to walk away with is much higher confidence around our product and innovation strategy, much higher confidence and several proof points of our growth strategy.
We're also gonna add Shannon Bell, who leads our cloud operation, to speak to you about cloud operations and infrastructure, which is important for the growth strategy. It is also important for the financial profile, and cloud being kind of the lead growth driver in the future. Those would be the three big takeaways, with plenty of other bells and whistles around it.
Okay. All right. That's great to hear. I guess we'll look forward to that event.
Exciting.
Madhu, I wanna thank you so much for being here, and the rest of the OpenText team.
Yeah.
And, I wanna thank everybody in the room as well.
Yeah. Thank you, and thank you to Citi.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right. Thanks, Madhu.